Illegal, but legitimate? How the Venezuelan Diaspora in Quito Narrates the Capture of Nicolás Maduro

In January 2026, the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro during an operation carried out by the United States became a highly contested political event because of how it unfolded, generating divergent narratives and perspectives on its legitimacy, mainly within the Venezuelan population and its diaspora. This thesis focuses on those divergent ideas; it examines how members of the Venezuelan diaspora residing in Ecuador construct narratives about the perceived legitimacy or illegitimacy of this event, and how these accounts reflect their transnational political identities. Framed within an interpretative constructivist research paradigm, this investigation examines legitimacy not as a fixed legal or normative property of the event itself, but as a socially constructed judgment shaped by lived experiences, political positioning, narrative perceptions, and sense-making. Guided by Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and Murray Edelman’s concept of the political spectacle, the analysis examines how twelve diaspora members construct, compare, verify, and negotiate competing narratives regarding the capture. Despite demographic and political differences, participants shared a notable consensus when defining the operation as legitimate, even while acknowledging its illegality. This collective judgment was rooted in personal and familiar direct experiences with the Chavismo regime and manifested intentionally and deliberately as a distinction of the event as a “capture”, over “kidnapping”. Furthermore, these narratives reveal a nuanced diaspora identity: some participants actively renegotiated their transnational political identity, while others perceived it as a stable core unaffected by their geographical position.